Executive Summary

Midas Hospitality Group is one of the premier hospitality management groups in the Midwest with over 30 hotel properties in 13 states. The corporate office employees are encouraged to wear branded apparel at work. The corporate staff facilitates a bi-annual “bulk buy”, which had become a more time-consuming project as the company grew. In addition, they did not have an efficient solution to meet ongoing needs throughout the year.

Challenges

Every six months, Jennifer Davis, Marketing Coordinator, began the arduous process of placing their corporate apparel order. The first step was product selection, including styles and colors. It was challenging to come up with fresh ideas for apparel to keep the program from getting stale. The company provided each employee $100 toward their individual apparel purchase, with the intent that employees would go above the $100 and spend their own money on additional items. However, this wasn’t happening – primarily because the apparel wasn’t changing much. How many of the same polos or button downs in similar styles and colors does someone want in their closet, right? Next, a spreadsheet was distributed among employees to select items, colors, and sizes. In addition, the client had four different divisions, so when they added in the wrinkle of four different logo options to a manual process, the customer experienced a frustrating amount of errors. After the order arrived, the clothing had to be sorted, matched to the original order, and distributed – another time consuming, manual process with the potential for more mistakes. Finally, the current program didn’t address the apparel needs of new employees who came on board between bulk orders, who sometimes had to wait months to receive their logoed apparel. The customer would wait for several employees to come aboard in order to hit order minimums from their supplier. Then the client would have to duplicate the process of the bulk order on a smaller scale – taking more of their most precious and finite commodity – time.

Solutions

First, we developed an online, secure, custom catalog that was current and retail oriented. The goal was to reduce the burden on the marketing department, and also provide options that employees would not only wear at work, but something they would want to wear outside the office. At Regency360 we call this Weekend Wear™ (For more about Weekend Wear™ watch this video). When recommending apparel items, we considered the different job functions for team members – from administrative and operational staff to sales, the executive team, and service personnel. The result was a diverse set of 30 items over six categories: Polos, Jackets, Hats, Sweaters/Sweatshirts, and Dress Wear. In addition to the apparel, we also added a Bags category with a messenger style and backpack option (backpacks are trending as the preferred bag for work).

Second, we enabled a “coupon” feature on their apparel company store. Employees were provided a “one-time use” coupon for $150 to be used toward their overall purchase. The original amount was $100 – however, the client was so excited about the catalog, they bumped it up to $150 to create more excitement for the launch. The tactic paid dividends, as many employees went significantly above the allotted amount, some spending over $300. The client was invoiced for the dollar amount of the redeemed coupons, and the individual employee paid for any remaining balance on the order with a personal credit card. Previously, the client’s accounting staff was responsible for payroll deductions for hundreds of employees several times a year.

Next, all the embroidered garments were shipped at the same time to the corporate office, boxed by style. All the items were individually poly-bagged and labeled with the first and last name of the employee and easily distributed (entered online by the employee at the point of purchase), which eliminated the hassle of manually sorting through the items and matching them up to the order spreadsheet.

Finally, the company apparel store is “open for business” 24/7. Every product is produced “on-demand”, meaning all items can be purchased in a quantity as low as one. The client was not required to invest in inventory, and a “program” price (the unit prices are the same regardless of order quantity) was implemented based on their annual volume commitment. New hires are issued a coupon for $150 as part of the onboarding process, and can place orders on their first day, with their branded apparel arriving in two weeks.

Scroll through the images below to view the Midas Hospitality landing page and company store, as well as some of the categories and products on the store.

The Midas Hospitality Group landing page. This is where the employees first go to access their new online company store. Scroll through the images to view some of the categories and products on the company store.

Results

An e-commerce solution that combines retail-quality apparel, consistent corporate branding, and a high level of customization. The platform transformed a cumbersome and archaic process into a slick employee engagement tool that is virtually hands off for the marketing and accounting staff.

I don’t have to limit our people to only ordering twice a year. This is especially helpful for new employees. I’m not spending time out of my day to tally everything, order, run to and from the embroidery shop and then package them all up and send individually.

Jennifer Davis, Marketing Coordinator, Midas Hospitality

Chris Adams, Account Executive in the Regency360 St. Louis office told us, “Jennifer knew she needed a better way to take their apparel program to the next level. She really leaned in when I told her we could build them a corporate apparel storefront where employees could place orders themselves, anytime throughout the year. I knew right then we were going to have a significant impact. One of the best parts of putting this together was giving them dozens and dozens of hours back in their workday through the course of the year. Additionally, we have completely changed how their employees view corporate apparel – now they are excited about clothing they are proud to wear. The client is thrilled with the increased visibility of their brand outside the work place, and more importantly, the improved employee experience. Midas Hospitality now has a scalable platform to roll out to all of their properties across the country. We really made a difference, and that’s what we are all about.”